Hunebed

Fieldnotes

Visited: April 11, 2014

This is one of the more remote hunebedden, and requires a walk of some seven kilometres from either Midlaren or Annen, as there is no direct bus service from any of the larger towns or cities. But on a fine day, the walk to Hunebed D6 Tynaarlo certainly reaps its rewards, as this diminutive 5.5 x 3.1 metre Bronze-Age passage grave ranks as the most complete in The Netherlands: the only thing missing is its original sand and turf-covered barrow.

The hunebed stands in a tree-bordered clearing in Tynaarlo, about 50 metres after Stationsstraat gives way to Hunebedstraat. No restoration has ever been carried out on D6 Tynaarlo and all the stones continue to stand exactly as they have for 5000 years! Not for nothing is D6 often dubbed 'the most beautiful hunebed in Drenthe'. It has, over the years, featured in a number of drawings and paintings.

As recently as 2010, an investigation revealed that the majority of the stones chosen by the hunebed builders for D6 consisted mainly of pink granite boulders, which are rare in this area. The shades are red, pink and light-pink, though there is no obvious pattern to their placement in the monument (for some unaccountable reason, this information is not provided on the noticeboard at Tynaarlo, but was found on the one beside hunebed D16 Balloo).

Hunebed D6 is the pride of Hunebedstraat in Tynaarlo. It is one of the best preserved megaliths in the Netherlands and still stands just as its builders created it. Twice every year, residents clean up the area around the monument and remove weeds and low bushes.